1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a printer and a printing system, and relates more particularly to a printer and a printing system that uses a cartridge that stores ink, toner, organic material for printing or other printing fluids or materials. To simplify the following discussion, the term “ink” will be used in the specification and the claims as a generic term that represents liquids or other materials for printing, such materials including ink, toner, organic materials and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printers such as inkjet printers and laser printers generally print text, pictures, or other content on plain paper, special paper, or other recording media by placing or fusing ink onto the recording medium. The ink is typically stored in a cartridge that can be freely installed in and removed from the printer. When the ink inside the cartridge is depleted in the course of using the printer, ink can be added by simply replacing the cartridge.
Printer manufacturers also usually supply the ink cartridges that are used in their printers to the end users, and are therefore also in the business of selling cartridges filled with ink.
More recently, manufacturers have developed new billing systems (printing systems) for charging the printer user based on the amount of ink consumed instead of selling individual cartridges.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2000-309147, for example, discloses a billing system in which the printer stores information about the consumption of consumable supplies (such as how toner is consumed and how much paper is used) for each user ID. The printer then sends this consumption information to a data processing terminal when requested, and the data processing terminal calculates the printer usage fee according to a predetermined formula based on this consumption information.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2004-90517 discloses an inkjet printer having a billing information management unit for managing ink usage. The billing information management unit calculates ink consumption based on the size and number of ink droplets discharged from the print head.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2002-36582 discloses a billing system in which the inkjet printer uses optical sensors to measure how much ink remains in the ink cartridge, and calculates ink usage based on how much ink remains. A data processing device connected to the inkjet printer acquires data relating how much ink is used (referred to below as simply “ink usage”) from the inkjet printer, and sends data relating to ink usage over a network to a server in a service center. The billing module that runs on the service center server then references an ink-billing table to calculate the billing amount based on ink usage and bills the user.
The following problems arise when these billing systems are actually installed and used, however.
The above billing system simultaneously manages plural printers and plural cartridges for plural users, and therefore requires a system that can identify each printer and each cartridge to acquire the ink usage information.
In businesses where this billing system is actually used, however, the billing system operator (the party providing the printer or cartridge) and the actual printer user are often in separate places. In the case of an inkjet printer, this requires constructing a system in which the user is only billed for the ink actually consumed from the specific ink cartridge provided by the operator to the user.
In order to reliably acquire ink usage data from a user in a remote location, it is also necessary to improve the reliability of the data acquired from the printer by, for example, preventing errors in the transmitted data.
In the operation of this billing system, the billing system operator must understand how ink cartridges are used in the remote location where the user is located, recover the depleted ink cartridges in a timely manner, and keep the user supplied with new ink cartridges filled with ink. The system operator must therefore reliably store accurate information relating to the depleted ink cartridges and what ink cartridges have been newly installed in the printer.
A server that is located in the service center and that handles the calculations could be used to receive and store the ink cartridge data received from the printer. However, if the service center server loses the ink cartridge data for some reason, the operator becomes unable to acquire data for the ink cartridge used by the user. Furthermore, because the operator cannot know when the depleted ink cartridges should be collected if the ink cartridge data cannot be acquired from the printer, filled ink cartridges cannot be supplied to the user when needed. This creates obvious business problems.